Plaza South Condominiums in Fort Lauderdale, FL began searching in early 2004 for a ‘gatekeeper’ system to manage security for their high-rise condominium complex. With 336 residential units, over 20,000 visitors per year and 5,000 packages delivered annually, the need to upgrade visitor management for improved security proved essential for the management team. With only 2 main entrances for visitors to enter, the lobbies were often congested.
Visitor management system
“We’re a large facility and we get lots of visitors,” said Sue Blalock of Plaza South. “The President of the Association was seeking to upgrade the way in which we handle visitors to improve both our security and our image.”
The visitor log at Plaza South was kept in an entirely hand-written fashion. Due to increased visitor volume, as well as a growing number of contractors and visitors entering the facility for unit renovations, there was a desire among both residents and management to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of how visitors were managed while maintaining the premium image of the complex.
“I was searching online for solutions and discovered EasyLobby,” said Blalock. “We signed up for a demo, ran the trial, and we liked what we saw. Even though we are a residential complex, we were particularly impressed with the many large companies who use EasyLobby.”
EasyLobby Secure Visitor Management HID Global’s EasyLobby Secure Visitor Management solution is now deployed at 3 different locations onsite for visitor management
HID Global’s EasyLobby Secure Visitor Management solution is now deployed at 3 different locations onsite for visitor management — the front desk, receiving area and the main office for administrative and reporting purposes.
“During the first few weeks of using EasyLobby we continued to run our ‘by hand’ guest books in parallel,” said Blalock. “Our reason for doing this was that our security personnel were generally not adept with technology and we wanted to avoid errors. However, since it was so easy to customize EasyLobby and tailor it specifically for our needs, we found that we could move to a fully automated solution very quickly.”
A key reason that EasyLobby has been successful at Plaza South is that it provides an ideal balance of power and flexibility, yet at the same time is very easy-to-use.
Asset management and tracking
The company has also leveraged the capabilities of the EasyLobby software using applications beyond visitor management. To streamline package management, when a package arrives at the front desk, it is recorded within EasyLobby with a signature captured and labeled for delivery to the proper unit and recipient. EasyLobby has labeled over 5,000 packages in 2008 alone.
“By using EasyLobby to track and label packages, the loss of packages between the front desk of the building and the final recipient has been dramatically reduced,” said Blalock.
Vehicle tracking and management Plaza South also utilises EasyLobby’s Asset Management capabilities to manage security tags and keys
In addition to package management, Easylobby enables the company to keep track of the visitor’s vehicles to streamline issues of improperly parked cars. It allows Plaza South to quickly locate the owner of the vehicle. In a large complex, performing this task using the old ‘pencil and paper’ method was extremely time-consuming, inefficient and frequently unsuccessful. With EasyLobby, the owner of any vehicle can be found and contacted both quickly and easily.
Plaza South also utilises EasyLobby’s Asset Management capabilities to manage security tags and keys, which are frequently provided to contractors and other frequent visitors for the tower they are working in or visiting.
While Plaza South has no near-term plans to physically expand their facility, the company is looking forward to finding new ways to leverage their investment in EasyLobby. “EasyLobby has been so easy to work with – and because the application keeps improving and getting more powerful, we are sure we’ll continue to find many other ways to put it to use for our complex and tenants,” said Blalock.